Good practices that cultivate gratitude and generosity are important for any parish. Good stewardship efforts strengthen communicants' commitment to Christ. And they strengthen the parish' financial base -- enabling important ministry efforts.

You Have to Ask

Too often the job of asking for generous commitments falls to one of three roles: 1) The priest --who is then likely accused of being self serving; 2) The treasurer or finance committee --who have a large, different and specific job --and stewardship may not fit their talents; 3) Nobody --which then often reverts to the aforementioned to deliver impassioned pleas. (Which often are too late and sound like begging)

Instead create a team of laypersons to assist with defining and implementing a parish stewardship effort.

We’ve offered this “laity does the asking” suggestion to numerous parishes. Often the objection is, “Well I just couldn’t ask people for money.” We, in turn, point out that, like evangelism, not everyone has the requisite gifts for stewardship ministry, however, many people can comfortably offer their personal insights of how God has worked in their life -- and the joys of sharing their blessings to support the work of the parish.

The Team's Tasks?

What are the jobs of this team? In general they configure the parish stewardship approach in a way that fits the culture of the parish AND encourages people to stretch a bit.

We suggest you start small. Consider a few of the tasks from this list:

• Competently communicate good Christian principles of generosity.
• Tell the story of accomplishments. 'Here is how we used the donations parishioner donations this year.'
• Collect or take photos to bring the story to life.
• Work with parish council to understand long term parish priorities -- particularly those which require solid budget support to bring to fruition. In some cases this may include pushing the parish council to focus on the longer term/bigger picture.
• Answer the "why" question? Share the above priorities to answer the question of 'Why should our parishioners return more to the parish? What do we hope to achieve?
• Plan the timeline, print copies, distribute
• Frameresponses to common objections.
• Explain parish stewardship practices to new members or young adults who should now support the parish. 
• Answer questions.
• Follow up with non-participating or late responding parishioners.
• Ask in some cases, for generous commitments from parishioners who are in a position to expand support.

Good Practical Advice

If you're looking for good practical advice about building a stewardship effort we found the book Creating Congregations of Generous People by Michael Durall to be useful.

A few tidbits:

• "Despite all the talk about raising money in churches, members are rarely challenged to increased generosity."
• Key question: “Is it possible to lead miserly lives (or lives of great indulgence) while giving little to the church (or other charitable organization) yet attending and considering oneself to be a person of faith?
• "Pledge programs are, on balance, the most useful stewardship method. Most are done poorly"